THE STUDY OF MEMORY THEORY APPROACH APPLIED ON CHINESE VOCABULARY TEACHING

Abstract

Vocabulary is an important part for foreign students studying Chinese. Since a number of vocabularies are abundant. The teacher not only has to encourage students to develop their Chinese skills, including the understanding of Chinese characters, Chinese pronunciations and Chinese direct and cultural meanings, but also needs to find proper methods to help students to memorize Chinese vocabularies. Thus, Memory strategy is very important. While teaching Chinese vocabularies, the teacher has to attach the importance to the Chinese vocabulary teaching memory strategy.  In this paper, the author will use vocabulary memory strategy based on cognitive theory to observe the Chinese vocabulary classes  in China (Chinese lesson for foreign students in Beijing language and Culture University) and Thai (high school in Nakhon Pathom and Ratchaburi province, Faculty of Education in Silpakorn University), show the similarities and differences of vocabulary classes between two countries. From the study, we learn that Chinese vocabulary class teacher should be more aware of 3 points: 1) students’ prior knowledges 2) vocabulary encoding 3) preview and review the lesson. In the end of the paper, the author provides an example of the curriculum, by dividing the curriculum into 3 stages: before class, in class and after class in order to improve students’ vocabularies memory skills.